Expectations of a Horror

I asked the following question to ten people, of varied ages:
What do you expect out of a horror film?
This is how they responded...



Definition of horror: An overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear.


The expectation of a horror film is to enforce a shuddering fear or a frightfully shocking feeling amongst the audience. When a film claims to be horror and are found to be un-frightful, they are considered unsuccessful and  gain a bad reputation. The audience viewing a horror film are aware that they are going to watch something which has been produced to scare them, therefore they are aware of what they could be enrolling for. This means that horror films shouldn't hold back from something because it is 'too scary', the audience are exchanging their time for a thrill/shock/fright - the audience expects to be scared and left with a shuddering fear.

However, old horror films focused on the fear and psychological side of horror much more than nowadays. They often focus on more explicit scenarios such as rape, murder and kidnapping in todays stereotypical horror.